Language and History in Ancient Greek Culture

Spanning forty years, this collection of essays represents the work of a renowned teacher and scholar of the ancient Greek world. Martin Ostwald's contribution is both philological and historical: the thread that runs through all of the essays is his precise explanation, for a modern audience, of some crucial terms by which the ancient Greeks saw and lived their livesand influenced ours. Chosen and sequenced by Ostwald, the essays demonstrate his methodology and elucidate essential aspects of ancient Greek society.The first section plumbs the social and political terms in which the Greeks understood their lives. It examines their notion of the relation of the citizen to his community, how they conceived different kinds of political structure, what role ideology played in public life, and how differently their most powerful thinkers viewed issues of war and peace. The second section is devoted to the problem, first articulated by the Greeks, of the extent to which human life is dominated by nature (physis) and human convention (nomos), a question that remains a central concern in modern societies, even if in different guises. The third section focuses on democracy in Athens. It confronts questions of the nature of democratic rule, of financing public enterprises, of the accountability of public officials, of the conflict raised by imperial control and democratic rule, of the coexistence of ",conservative", and ",liberal", trends in a democratic regime, and of the relation between rhetoric and power in a democracy. The final section is a sketch of the principles on which the two greatest Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, constructed their outlooks on human affairs.Ultimately, the collection intends to make selected key concepts in ancient Greek social and political culture accessible to a lay audience. It also shows how the differencesrather than the similaritiesbetween the ancient Greeks and us can contribute to a deeper understanding of our own time.

Auteur
Martin Ostwald is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Classics at Swarthmore College. From 1968 to 1992 he taught in the Department of Classical Studies and the Graduate Group in Ancient History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law, among many distinguished books and essays.

Contenu

Introduction

A. POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE POLIS

1. Shares and Rights: "Citizenship" Greek Style and American Style
2. Isokratia as a Political Concept
3. Oligarchy and Oligarchs in Ancient Greece
4. Stasis and Autonomia in Samos: A Comment on an Ideological Fallacy
5. Peace and War in Plato and Aristotle

B. NOMOS IN GREEK HISTORY AND THOUGHT

6. Pindar, Nomos, and Heracles (Pindar, frg. 169 [Snell3] and POxy. No. 2450, frg. 1)
7. Was There a Concept Agraphos Nomos in Classical Greece?
8. Nomos and Physis in Antiphon's Peri Alethias

C. CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF ATHENS

9. Athenian DemocracyReality or Illusion?
10. Public Expense: Whose Obligation? Athens 600-454 B.C.E.
11. Diodotus, Son of Eucrates
12. Athens and Chalkis: A Study in Imperial Control
13. The Areopagus in the Athenaion Politeia
14. The Sophists and Athenian Politics.

D. LITERATURE AND HISTORY

15. Herodotus and Athens
16. Thucydides

Bibliography of Martin Ostwald
Index
Acknowledgments